Nostalgia equity

When I was finishing up my commentary on last month's comics, I found myself using the phrase "nostalgia equity." Today I found myself thinking about what that meant and how much it was worth.

What I mean when I say "nostalgia equity" is that an item (say, a comic book) has a personal value above and beyond the quality of the book itself. That, if I've got a long history reading a book, a long-standing affection for its characters, that book is worth more to me personally than a book of equal quality (in terms of story and art) where I lack that emotional connection. Time I spent with the books, the characters, builds their value to me as an individual.

That's most of the reason I tend toward Marvel comics. I grew up reading Marvel. I was never averse to reading DC books (that'd be the husband, who refers to the DC cover logo as a "warning label" :)). I just didn't read them as a rule, apart from the Legion of Superheroes in whatever title they were occupying. Silver Age DC wasn't something I cared for as a kid.

Now, I do read DC books and have developed a fondness for some of the characters. But Wonder Woman and Green Lantern aren't "old friends" in the same way that Iron Man and the Scarlet Witch are.

It's possible, by the way, for a book to lose its nostalgia equity. It has happened to the Legion of Superheroes. It's still a pretty good book, but the characters aren't the same characters I grew up with (and I mean that literally, not just in terms of character change, which I can live with--hell, I still mostly like and am interested in Iron Man, even after Civil War! :)), and at some point the connection I felt to the book was gone. (It probably started back when they had the two Legion teams, one young and one older...) But something pretty big has to happen for that to occur, something that, to me, changes the essence of the character. Doesn't mean that I'd stop reading a book featuring that character, but it does mean that the book no longer gets to coast on my childhood memories.

What this means practically is that I will usually have more patience with a Marvel book if there's a temporary drop in quality. The nostalgia factor will carry a book along for a while. That's why I've never given up on the Avengers, whatever the incarnation. (On the whole I'm glad of this, because I've enjoyed most of what I've seen.) It's why, while I was occasionally annoyed with the delays in the current Iron Man series, I never considered taking it off the list. And it's why I dropped Wonder Woman and Green Lantern as soon as they started to bore me. In fairness, there are DC books that would get more of a break, but none that would get the break that, say, Fantastic Four would.

I suppose this means that I'm not necessarily the most reliable opinion with regard to comics, but at least I recognize my bias. :)